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Jeremy Liew

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Jeremy Liew
Liew, 2018
Born21 September 1971
Singapore
NationalityDual citizen, Australia, U.S.
Alma materAustralian National University, BSc (Hons) ’93, BA (Hons) ’94
Stanford University, MBA 2000
OccupationVenture capitalist
Board member ofLightspeed
Affirm
The Honest Company
Bonobos
Blockchain.com
Presidio Knolls School
SpouseRanee Lan
Children2

Jeremy Liew (born 21 September 1971) is a venture capitalist, best known for making the initial seed investment in Snapchat.[1]

Early life and education

[edit]

Liew was born in Singapore and raised in Perth, Western Australia, where his parents still reside.[2] In his senior year in high school, he represented Australia at the International Math Olympiad, where his teammate was future Fields Medalist Terry Tao.[3]

He graduated from Australian National University with majors in linguistics and mathematics.[4] Following graduation, he joined McKinsey as a business analyst, first working in Sydney and then briefly in Johannesburg. When one of his bosses started CitySearch, a mid-90s Internet pioneer, he moved to Los Angeles to join the company, working in sales and as manager of strategic planning.[5]

In 1998, Liew went back to school, receiving an MBA from Stanford University in 2000.[6] After graduation, he became vice president of strategic planning for USA Networks. He was involved in the transition to IAC, when it added companies such as Ticketmaster, Expedia and Hotel.com to its portfolio.[5] He spent three years at AOL/Netscape as a corporate strategy executive[7] and then entered the world of venture capital.[5]

Venture capital

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In 2006, he joined venture capital firm Lightspeed Venture Partners as its first consumer specialist partner.[8] At that time, Lightspeed it was a small firm specializing in tech startups that were largely unknown outside of Silicon Valley.[9] He noticed that startups that were used predominantly by young women were the most successful. He concluded that young women were the most likely carriers of the next popular cultural trend.[10] To better understand this demographic, he looked outside of Silicon Valley to Los Angeles and New York to observe their consumer preferences, and develop a data driven approach to it.[11]

In 2015, he noted that most of the boards he was on at the time were outside of Silicon Valley.[12][13] This "follow the woman" thesis eventually led him to Snapchat, when in 2012 a partner told him that his daughter and her friends were obsessed with a new app he should look into. This led to a meeting with co-founder Evan Spiegel.[14] He subsequently became the first investor in Snapchat.[1]

The initial investment was $485,000, but in following rounds of investments, Lightspeed invested a total of $8.1 million into the app. This increased 250-fold in value to just under $2 billion at the time of Snapchat's IPO in 2017.[15] Relations between Spiegel and Liew quickly deteriorated, as Spiegel felt he was taken advantage of with an onerous agreement for the initial seeding. This was later modified giving Lightspeed further shares at a discount.

Liew was the first and last investor to get special terms from the company.[16][17] The success Liew brought Lightspeed with this investment and its IPO put the firm, having become a megafund, into the elite of the competitive V.C. world.[18] The return on the IPO was greater than what the firm had raised in 2006. Liew was described as a major winner in all of this.[9]

Investments

[edit]

Liew was the first institutional investor and early member of the board of Bonobos, an upscale, e-commerce-driven apparel company that is now a subsidiary of Walmart.[19][20] He was also a first investor and member of the board of Jessica Alba's firm, The Honest Company.[21][22][23][24] He became a board member of Affirm, a financial lender of installment loans for consumers, after becoming the co-first institutional investor.[25][21][26]

Jeremy Liew has been a featured speaker[27] and moderator at conferences on video game monetization[28] and has been called a "social game visionary."[29] He has invested in a number of successful gaming companies, including Playdom (acquired by Disney), Serious Business (bought by Zynga), Kixeye,[30] and Fan Controlled Football.[31] He feels that user engagement is more important than design and is skeptical of Facebook games, referring to them as "highly deterministic and predictable."[30][32] In 2023, Lightspeed hired Moritz Baier-Lentz as partner and head of gaming to build out and lead the firm's gaming practice.[33]

He was an active investor in media and entertainment, with startups including Giphy (sold to Facebook), HQ, Cheddar Inc., and Beme (acquired by CNN). Successful exits have included Flixster (acquired by Warner Brothers), Kongregate (acquired by GameStop and later by Modern Times), and Slice (acquired by Rakuten).[3][34] Recognizing that consumer trends begin with women and are best spread by word-of-mouth[35] led Liew (who heard about it that way) to make a $7 million investment in Rothy's, a company making shoes from recycled plastic bottles and are recyclable themselves.[36]

Liew was also involved in investments that turned out to be disappointing, including Zest AI (formerly ZestFinance), which started out as an online platform to consumers for point-of-sale subprime financing, using Artificial Intelligence to screen for suitable borrowers, now selling software.[7][37] He invested in Living Social, which was a daily deals firm that enjoyed a meteoric rise, but ultimately failed. In 2016, it was acquired by Groupon for $0.[38] Liew had invested in the first ridesharing company, named Sidecar. The startup lost out to Uber and Lyft, folding in 2015.[39] Finally, another investment of his, Mic, a media and internet company catering to millennials, saw its value dwindle from hundreds of millions of dollars in 2017 to $5 million in November 2018, the value at which it was sold to Bustle.[40] Liew ascribed the collapse to a change in Facebook algorithms.[41]

Digital Currency

[edit]

Liew is a proponent of cryptocurrency and has invested in businesses dealing with digital currency.[42] He sees its value in times of political instability when citizens lose faith in their own currency. He co-led the first venture round for Blockchain.com. He favors bitcoin, as it is the most traded.[43] He has predicted the price of bitcoin to be $500,000 by 2030.[44]

Liew has been named to the Midas List, recognizing the best deal makers in V.C., multiple times.[45] In August 2021, just shy of his 50th birthday,[46] Liew announced he would step back from investing, though he would remain a partner at Lightspeed.[47]

Philanthropy

[edit]

He is a founding trustee of the Presidio Knolls School, a Mandarin immersion PreK-8 school in San Francisco.[8]

After the 2021 Atlanta murder of six Asian women, Liew joined with other tech investors to fund causes to fight anti-Asian hate.[48][49]

Liew and his wife Ranee Lan were described as instrumental in raising the money for a playground at Sue Bierman Park, in San Francisco's Embarcadero, across from the Ferry Building.[50] They have also been donors to and supporters of the construction of affordable housing in San Francisco.[51][52]

Personal life

[edit]

Liew is married with two children.[53] Liew has lived in the U.S. for twenty years and is a dual citizen of Australia and the U.S., but still considers himself an Aussie.[4] Liew has been a student of the San Francisco Movement Practice.[54][55]

Political views

[edit]

Liew rejects grievance politics from the Right or Left. He rejects the idea that America can go back to the good old days, either nationally or locally. After holding out on becoming a citizen for over a decade, he felt compelled to vote in 2016 and became a citizen. Although not a staunch Democrat, he has supported Democrats on a national level and voted for moderates in local elections.[56]

References

[edit]
  1. ^ a b Shontell, Alyson. "How Snapchat's first investor — whose stake is now worth $2 billion — found Snapchat when it had less than 100,000 users". Business Insider. Retrieved 2022-06-15.
  2. ^ McDuling, John (2017-11-09). "Amazon is not invincible, says Silicon Valley's most powerful Aussie Jeremy Liew". The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved 2021-10-20.
  3. ^ a b "Jeremy Liew | Bio | Premiere Speakers Bureau". premierespeakers.com. Retrieved 2021-10-19.
  4. ^ a b "Meet the Aussie, Jeremy Liew, who made billions on Snapchat". Australian Financial Review. 2017-03-02. Retrieved 2021-10-18.
  5. ^ a b c "Full transcript: Venture Capitalist Jeremy Liew on Recode Decode". Vox. 2017-03-05. Retrieved 2021-10-19.
  6. ^ Lee, Allen (2021-01-24). "10 Things You Didn't Know About Jeremy Liew". Money Inc. Retrieved 2021-10-18.
  7. ^ a b "Jeremy Liew: If I were to go back, I'd skip all my operating experience and go straight into VC". Pando. 2014-12-17. Archived from the original on 2021-10-20. Retrieved 2021-10-19.
  8. ^ a b "Jeremy Liew". Gold House. Retrieved 2021-10-19.
  9. ^ a b "Snap vaults venture investor Lightspeed into the Silicon Valley elite". Reuters. 2017-03-01. Retrieved 2021-10-22.
  10. ^ "20VC: The Snapchat Memo: Lightspeed's Jeremy Liew on The 4 Key Elements To Consider When Evaluating A Consumer Social Product, What is Good/Great/World Class For Retention, Usage and Downloads in Consumer Social Today & The Core Insight Development of Evan Spiegel's That Has Changed Social Products Forever". 20VC. 2021-02-24. Retrieved 2021-10-19.
  11. ^ "Jeremy Liew on What He Will, And Won't, Invest in Right Now". www.strictlyvc.com. 21 July 2016. Retrieved 2021-10-21.
  12. ^ "Jeremy Liew on Snapchat, Anonymous Apps, and the Fallibility of Intuition". www.strictlyvc.com. 26 May 2015. Retrieved 2021-10-21.
  13. ^ Coren, Michael J. (7 September 2016). "A VC firm's simple investment thesis: Follow the women". Quartz. Retrieved 2021-10-19.
  14. ^ Carlson, Nicholas. "This Startup Investor's Teen Daughter Helped Him Turn $500,000 Into $31 Million In 18 Months". Business Insider. Retrieved 2021-10-19.
  15. ^ Taylor, Harriet (2017-03-02). "The Snap IPO means a huge payday for two VC firms". CNBC. Retrieved 2021-10-19.
  16. ^ Benner, Katie (2017-02-23). "Snapchat Founders' Grip Tightened After a Spat With an Early Investor". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2021-10-15.
  17. ^ "Snap supporters find a scapegoat in Jeremy Liew". TechCrunch. 26 February 2017. Retrieved 2021-10-19.
  18. ^ Konrad, Alex. "VC Firm Lightspeed Raises $4 Billion In Startup Landscape Shaken By COVID-19". Forbes. Retrieved 2021-10-22.
  19. ^ "Walmart bought Bonobos — and the bros aren't happy". Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved 2021-10-23.
  20. ^ Liew, Jeremy (2017-06-16). "Congratulations to Bonobos and Jet". Lightspeed Venture Partners. Retrieved 2021-10-23.
  21. ^ a b "Jeremy Liew". Forbes. Retrieved 2021-10-19.
  22. ^ "Honest Company Stock: What You Should Know About the Honest Company". www.cityindex.co.uk. Retrieved 2021-10-19.
  23. ^ Borison, Rebecca. "Jessica Alba's Startup Raises $70 Million At A Nearly $1 Billion Valuation". Business Insider. Retrieved 2021-10-20.
  24. ^ "Jeremy Liew net worth, bio and Honest Company, Inc insider trades". Benzinga. Retrieved 2021-10-21.
  25. ^ "Affirm's Journey from Startup to IPO". www.linkedin.com. Retrieved 2021-10-20.
  26. ^ "UPDATE 3-Max Levchin's Affirm sees stock nearly double in Nasdaq debut". Reuters. 2021-01-13. Retrieved 2021-10-22.
  27. ^ Graft, Kris (2009-06-23). "Social Gaming Summit: In-Depth On The State Of Social Gaming". Game Developer. Retrieved 2021-10-19.
  28. ^ Smith, Justin (June 12, 2008). "Social Gaming Summit is this Friday in San Francisco". Retrieved 2021-10-19.
  29. ^ "What is Games 2.0? Conversation with Social Gaming Visionary Jeremy Liew of Lightspeed Venture Partners". April 27, 2008. Retrieved 2021-10-19.
  30. ^ a b "Understanding How to Sell VCs on Your Game, Part II: Jeremy Liew, Lightspeed Venture Partners - Game Design Secrets [Book]". www.oreilly.com. Retrieved 2021-10-19.
  31. ^ Peter, Josh. "Another new league, Fan Controlled Football, starts Saturday with totally different rules". USA TODAY. Retrieved 2021-10-19.
  32. ^ "Lightspeed's Jeremy Liew is on the hunt for always-on media startups". TechCrunch. November 2019. Retrieved 2021-10-20.
  33. ^ Renbarger, Madeline. "How VC Moritz Baier-Lentz went from being one of the world's best professional gamers to the new head of Lightspeed's gaming practice". Business Insider. Retrieved 2023-05-06.
  34. ^ Cowley, Ric (20 June 2017). "Modern Times Group to acquire casual games publisher Kongregate for $55 million". pocketgamer.biz. Retrieved 2021-10-20.
  35. ^ "Keys to a Successful Viral App with Snapchat Investor Jeremy Liew". Commaful. Retrieved 2021-10-27.
  36. ^ Mzezewa, Tariro (2017-06-06). "What if Your Environmentally Correct Shoes Were Also Cute?". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2021-10-21.
  37. ^ "Can an A.I. algorithm help end unfair lending? This company says yes". Fortune. Retrieved 2021-10-21.
  38. ^ "rip- livingsocial the fast rise and slow demise". Washington Post.
  39. ^ Hawkins, Andrew J. (2015-12-29). "Uber rival Sidecar is ending ride-sharing and delivery services this week". The Verge. Retrieved 2021-10-22.
  40. ^ "Mic Raises US$21 Million, Intends to Expand Video Content -". www.portada-online.com. 2017-04-10. Retrieved 2021-10-24.
  41. ^ "Pivoting to nowhere: How Mic ran out of radical makeovers". Digiday. 2018-11-30. Retrieved 2021-10-24.
  42. ^ "To grow, Bitcoin may need to shed its world of intrigue". CNBC. 2014-01-30. Retrieved 2021-12-14.
  43. ^ Castillo, Michelle (2017-06-20). "The first investor in Snapchat explains why the bitcoin rally is just getting started". CNBC. Retrieved 2021-12-14.
  44. ^ "The first investor in Snapchat thinks each bitcoin could realistically be worth $500,000 by 2030 — Here's how". www.yahoo.com. 8 April 2017. Retrieved 2021-12-14.
  45. ^ "Lightspeed's Jeremy Liew on Imposter Syndrome & Breakthrough Ideas". The Proof. Retrieved 2021-10-20.
  46. ^ "Capital firms resignations". Axios.
  47. ^ "Lightspeed Partner Jeremy Liew Steps Back at Firm". Bloomberg.com. 2021-09-17. Retrieved 2021-10-19.
  48. ^ Bursztynsky, Jessica; Kolodny, Lora (2021-03-24). "Investors in Airbnb, TikTok and Snap join forces to fight anti-Asian hate". CNBC. Retrieved 2021-10-19.
  49. ^ Ax, Joseph (2021-04-30). "Asian-American groups push for socio-political clout with funding surge". Reuters. Retrieved 2021-10-20.
  50. ^ "Playground at Sue Bierman Park" (PDF). Bcnasf.
  51. ^ Truong, Kevin (December 14, 2020). "S.F. Housing Accelerator Fund launches new model to finance affordable housing". www.bizjournals.com. Retrieved 2021-12-23.
  52. ^ "San Francisco Donors Have a New Way to Invest in Affordable Housing". The San Francisco Foundation. 2020-12-11. Retrieved 2021-12-23.
  53. ^ "Q&A: Jeremy Liew". ANU Reporter. Archived from the original on 2021-10-19. Retrieved 2021-10-19.
  54. ^ "The Robin Zander Show: Jeremy Liew, partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners on Doing the Impossible and Staying Relevant at 50 on Apple Podcasts". Apple Podcasts. Retrieved 2021-10-21.
  55. ^ "SF Movement Practice". sfmovementpractice.pike13.com. Retrieved 2021-10-21.
  56. ^ Liew, Jeremy (2016-11-07). "I immigrated to the US 20 years ago. This is the first US election that I will vote in". Medium. Retrieved 2021-10-20.
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